Light it all up…
Really, light it all up.
Pump it up.
Get excited.
All fired up.
Now, let it all go.
Take a deep breath and slowly exhale.
That’s right, pump it up.
And let it all go.
That’s The Cure
Actually, just the first two steps, Leading With The Physical.
Using your body and breathing to get yourself fired up, and chilling out.
So you’re left in this high energy, yet calm way of being.
You know how good this feels, and it is perhaps the most exulted way of being.
The flow state, a peak state for performance and happiness, reflects this.
So too does the meditation state, which is often described as alert and relaxed.
At first blush we might consider these ways of being contradictory—You’re either fired up or chilling out.
Yet like a gazelle, and lion for that matter, sitting on the plains of Africa, the blending of these states might be our most natural.
For about 15 years I’ve been cultivating a way of being I refer to as Intense and Cool, which we’ll talk about below, yet I’m still only so-so at.
Directionally I’m right here.
The Cure, shorthand for The Cure For The Human Condition, is my most helpful tool, but it still has a massive limitation.
You’ve gotta remember to do it!
See, a reason I long ago moved beyond the noise of personal development, such as talking about gratitude or positive thinking, to build highly systematic methods and powerful tools is because it never matters what you know.
All that matters is…
Are you doing it?
Watching every tape of every top boxer might make you knowledgeable about boxing, but if you’re in a fight all that matters is can you punch?
For this reason these tools must be incredibly simple and easy to use, because getting yourself doing this can be the hard part.
Built over years and countless iterations, people say to me, that’s it!?
That’s your cure for happiness?
Well, yes, and no.
First, I try to NEVER use the word happiness.
The problem with that word is you take something incredibly simple and turn it into a complex intellectual topic.
e.g. Are you happy? Why are you happy? What makes you happy? How could you be happier?
Happy people never think about being happy!
It’s just your natural way of being.
This is why I use the phrase feeling good.
Coz, feeling good is simple.
Are you feeling good? How good? If you put a smile on your face (step 3 of The Cure), do you feel even better?
What if you pump your arms and say hells yeah (Step 4 of The Cure, a mantra), how do you now feel?
I know this works.
With tens of thousands of hours on this topic I know it’s all that matters to how you think and feel.
Yet, it’s still not easy for me
I never have regrets.
As M says, “Regret is unprofessional” and it’s completely unconstructive.
Rather than regret, a better way is to use the learnings to make different choices in the future.
Yet, if I did have regrets, her name is Heidi.
She was my girlfriend back in LA when I was at Goldman, and focused on leaving.
Heidi and I broke up for the right reasons.
Yet the regret would be that we could have more indulged our time together.
Life is short and often thinking about the future gets in the way of loving the present.
Back then I was so in my head about all these topics.
What am I doing with my life?
Should I leave my job at Goldman?
Waking up too many days like ugh, I don’t know what to do.
When I could have been waking up with this amazing woman and just enjoying now is what we do.
More playing.
Laughing.
Making more love and sex energy.
It took me some 10 more years to really get these concepts, and build the system for living my ultimate days.
Yet I’m still not good enough at actually living it.
Let alone living it, while doing things that are even harder for me.
Have more fun in the shit storm!
You’re seeing me do in real time what used to be very hard.
In fact, some things that were impossible for me only months ago.
Revealing more of my truth.
Sharing ideas that are beyond what I was comfortable doing.
And as recently as last week going after topics that were too hard for me to discuss publicly.
These are heavier topics.
Our political mess.
In the past it was easier to avoid these topics.
Fearing what people would think, really, what they’d say, it was easier to avoid speaking my mind.
But muzzling myself trying to avoid offending people created frustration.
Anticipating the shit storm that comes with a third rail topic, I was too often accessing fight or flight.
So in the past it was easier to avoid these harder topics.
That’s a fail.
It’s me failing to stand for what truly matters.
Skirting the issues.
It’s the same type of fail I’m critical of the so-called enlightened beings living behind their monastery walls, avoiding all worldly agitations.
Avoiding doing hard things it’s easier to feel good!
But I never want to skirt the issues or avoid speaking my mind because of fears and insecurities.
The challenge for me is doing both.
Being able to hit even the hardest topics, while standing perfectly calm in the eye of the shit storm.
Intense and cool
Talking to my buddy on the street a woman in a restaurant angrily yelled at me, “Can you keep it down?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
Just chatting away having a laugh, I had no clue how loud I was being.
I’ve heard that plenty of times over the years.
Apparently I can be loud.
Apparently I’m intense too.
That’s another one I kept hearing that used to surprise me.
To me, I’m just me.
I wouldn’t call it intense, it’s just that I’ve only ever known giving it everything you’ve got.
Working 7 days a week, 100 hours for decades, is my normal.
And it took me most of those decades to see that what was normal to me can be intense to others experiencing me.
On my desk is a sign that says Smiley, Playing Is ALL.
It comes back to these first two steps of The Cure, and also this learning I got years ago in Vail.
Back then my work was incredibly hard, and it felt this way.
Busting my mind over a job that was busting me, I didn’t know any other way.
And that’s when I learned a lesson skiing that would become a new “device” for me.
Standing at the top of a stupidly dangerous cornice, it struck me.
Skiing hard, doing the hardest things was fun to me, and I could now see my work the same way.
That you can be going after it hard, really on your edge, challenged far beyond your comfort zone, and yet still be calm, chill, having a laugh, loving it.
This became an “entry point” for the Intense and Cool state.
Watching Jordan “play”
Clients kept telling me to watch the documentary on Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance, and even though I consume little media, I started to check it out.
I’m bored by sports, let alone people talking about sports, but given I’m focused on people really going after it, I knew there was something in here to find.
It wasn’t what I expected.
It’s a great story of this winning guy and team.
But something that kept jumping out at me is, where’s the play?
Where’s the fun?
This “game” of basketball that they’re so focused on winning is devoid of fun.
More like arrggghhh.
Gotta be the best.
Arrrghhhh, gotta win another championship.
Now of course the business of professional sports is very different to hanging out with your buds throwing hoops.
Yet, it’s like there’s not one laugh in the thing.
Even the way they interview the players is sitting by themselves.
Like they couldn’t even get them in a room together?
For a team sport, talking about a team movie, at least as far as I got watching it, they never even sit with each other, let alone have a laugh about those good ole’ days.
Worse, the documentary is set up around conflict.
How the team manager was this, the owner was that, how this guy did this, and that guy said that.
All the ups and downs of winning and losing.
How they’re paid and not paid.
Fierce competition.
Rivalries.
It’s all good stuff for people who love to get on their emotional rollercoaster watching sports.
And certainly there’s some OK learnings on being your best and going after it.
But there’s little celebrating yay we won!
Most of it is like dissecting a decade of marriage, focusing on all the drama, than the feeling of loving it.
Not saying it’s not valuable for someone looking to get fired up—although I can think of much shorter, faster, better “tools.”
But it was extremely valuable for me in remembering the play!
Remember the play
“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare famously wrote, “And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…”
Notice how I shifted the context of the word “play.”
Because I want to play with this ambiguity for setting up another one in a moment.
This meaning of “play” feels like a serious affair, doesn’t it?
You’ve gotta show up for rehearsal, remember all your lines, put on a good show because everyone is watching you.
Like the Bulls running onto the court, the play business is very different to kids dressing up playing around getting married in the backyard.
Much of life is the same.
We’re all putting on our masks (literally these days), playing our many parts.
At any moment you can change how you’re thinking and feeling, and play a different character.
Yet, for the most part, us humans are “locked into” a certain way of being.
One might call this the ego, some perception of “identity,” or perhaps the person other people expect you to be.
So you do your best to stay consistent playing this “character,” yet inside, is this who you’re always being?
And while playing this part, how much are you playing?
To go back to my indecent topic of building energy using sex, this is what I perceive is most destructive about our world of porn.
How much porn looks like making love, let alone play?
Does it teach the kids that sex is fun, playful, laughing, enjoying each other, or that sex is a serious business of banging away?
The same is true with our work.
Work hard, play hard implies that when it’s business time you must be all serious, before you can go get plastered with your colleagues.
In theory, this means nearly all of your life, and many relationships, are absent of play!
Lighten is the same
A reason we’re playing around with the ambiguity of play is because I’m playing with “lighten” the same way.
A definition of light is kinesthetic, referring to weight.
To lighten up your load, let go of all those things, drop the tension, remove the heaviness, to get lighter, float more, etc.
Another definition is visual.
To see the light.
Rather than looking at things that are dark in our world and getting darker, to be a bringer of light.
To illuminate for others.
Elevate beyond the miserable darker energies of our world and bathe in the sunshine of these lighter energies, radiating light for yourself and others.
When we’re pumping The Cure we’re doing both.
You’re elevating yourself, lightening it all up, feeling more at ease, and more free.
At the same time you’re seeing the lighter side, putting a smile on your face, using a mantra like hells yeah, to remind yourself no matter what’s happening out there, you can be lighter inside.
So we have all that, yet as I said, I’m still not good enough at it.
Which is why in September Man I’m taking it to another level, going deeper conditioning another powerful principle.
Living your end state
End State is fancy speak in psychology for the solution or end you’re seeking.
Meaning, when you’ve solved that problem.
Or otherwise availed yourself of opportunity.
When it’s all done.
You’ve made it.
Have what you want.
Are this person you have dreamed to be.
Now, who are you being?
How are you thinking?
What are you feeling?
This is you living in your end state energy.
So instead of that brain of yours tricking you to think that you can’t feel your most amazing until you get “there,” you’re living in this energy now.
Coz, we’re all too smart to be tricked by that brain, aren’t we?
You’ve gotten too many things in your life to know that brain will focus on that next thing because the human condition is the Getting There Program.
And instead you’re showing that brain of yours a much richer way you can experience your life now.
This is the epitome of what I’m working on.
That no matter where you are in your life, you can be feeling amazing at will.
Also this is Intense and Cool.
Not just feeling amazing coz you’re sitting on the beach, but you’re doing the hardest things you can imagine, and still feeling exactly how you want to feel.
Metaphor One for locking it in
I’m condition the end state using a lot of hypnosis, yet these are two powerful metaphors I use that you can use for yourself.
Although I’ve used these metaphors for years, I still haven’t been able to get the Geoff Blades machine locked in.
So here in September Man I’m “trying” to lock it in.
Yes, as Yoda says, “There is no try,” yet when you’re still not good enough at something the best you can do is keep trying and trying and trying again.
Metaphor One is literally, The One, a scene from the end of the final Matrix film.
When Neo has completed the mission.
The war between us humans and the machines has ended.
On a bench in a park near where I used to work and live in Sydney, the Oracle and Architect come to meet.
The sun is radiating.
A perfect utopic scene.
This moment in time when the mission is done, and humanity, inside and outside the Matrix, is bathing in this glowing energy.
It’s a great feeling, right?
When you’ve succeeded, and now you’re soaking up this energy.
In the Jordan documentary you see moments like this.
Yet it’s more like crying with relief, the release of high strung arrrrghhhhh tension and gotta get it done energy.
When the energy of play might be very different, right?
There’s lots you can play with from this end state in the Matrix movies, yet it’s not the one I most “try” to condition in Geoff Blades.
Limitless metaphor
Right near the end of the movie Limitless there’s a scene I refer to as the New Vision For New York Scene.
Eddie has killed it.
He’s now on track to easily be elected to the Senate on his way to president.
After the hard journey he’s been on he’s now in this end state energy.
A light way to him.
Floating through the office chatting to people.
Even though he’s playing bigger than ever, this man on the world stage, he has an effortless glow and ease about him.
But then something shifts.
His old mentor and now nemesis Carl Van Loon shows up and they have a difficult conversation.
In this moment Eddie goes from being easy breezy to metaphorically kicking the shit out of Van Loon.
The intensity is here.
Right beneath the surface, when he’s pushed, it comes out.
Yet just moments later as he’s walking off to lunch he’s back to his easy breezy cool energy.
This is a man living his end state.
He’s evolved beyond where he began the movie as a total loser. (Who I refer to as Eddie 1)
As Eddie 2, he was on the up and down journey, using the pills NZT which boosted and then dumped his energy.
And now he’s here at the end of the movie.
All this is behind him.
Eddie 3 is now living his end state.
Not to say he doesn’t have lots of hard things ahead of him, he’s an extremely ambitious fellow.
But none of that gets to him anymore.
He can play his hardest game with this lightness, ease, he couldn’t access before.
Who is this you?
You’re seeing me “try” to lock this in September Man.
I’m no longer skirting the issues, avoiding hard topics.
My game is getting harder and I’m going at it harder.
But it’s so crucial to me that I can every day live inside my grandest end state energies.
Reminding yourself this is play.
Being intense and cool.
That you can be doing things that are heavy and feeling lighter.
Taking on topics that are dark, but bringing the light.
I can’t know what this means to you, but I’m hoping you do.
In the way you’ve been thinking perhaps?
How you’re going after your goals?
Who you’re being waking up and with those you love?
That you can be doing things that are serious and intense, but still be bringing your play and cool.
This life of ours is meant to be this way.
Not all argggghhh, gotta get it done.
But light it all up!
Let it all go now!